Saying a tearful good-bye to Reid and the filibuster
Harry Reid is leaving the Senate, and in this interview with Politico he evaluates his tenure and makes predictions. He thinks he did just fine, and that the future for the Democrats looks just fine, too:
“They have Trump, I understand that. But I don’t think the Democratic Party is in that big of trouble,” Reid said in a half-hour interview with Politico on Wednesday, one day before he’ll deliver his farewell address. “I mean, if Comey kept his mouth shut, we would have picked up a couple more Senate seats and we probably would have elected Hillary.”
Well, what did you expect from Reid? And who knows, he may even be correct that the Democrats will rise again. Stranger reversals have happened, such as the unexpected triumph of the GOP that we’re experiencing right now.
Does anyone mourn Reid’s leaving, even the Democrats? He has really been a nasty piece of work, even for a politician.
This statement of his in the interview caught my attention [emphasis mine]:
Reid’s most controversial move as leader ”” invoking the “nuclear option” on Senate confirmations ”” will leave his party essentially powerless to halt Trump’s Cabinet selections.
Reid insisted that it was the right thing to do.
“I don’t know if it’s my biggest achievement, but I’m satisfied we did it. We had to. Look at why it was done,” said Reid, who turned 77 this month. “We got almost 100 judges approved ”¦ we saved the integrity of different agencies of government. No, think of what our country would’ve been without that.”
Reid predicted that the 60-vote filibuster threshold for legislation and for Supreme Court nominees will ultimately disappear altogether ”” calling it a natural evolution of the chamber.
The rules are “going to erode, it’s just a question of when,” Reid said. “You can’t have a democracy decided by 60 out of 100, and that’s why changing the rules is one of the best things that has happened to America in a long time. It’s good for us, it’s good for them.”
Small point—I think he actually might have meant: “you can’t have a democracy blocked by 41 out of 60.”
The larger picture is that Reid is trying to cast himself re the filibuster not as the autonomous agent of change, but as a mere cog being carried along by the wheel of history. The filibuster (actually, the earlier filibuster plus the adoption in 1917 of the rule about how many votes are necessary for cloture) had been in operation since 1837, with plenty of motivation to change it along the way. But despite this both sides had decided—till Reid came along—that it was in their best interests to keep it as a sort of insurance policy against the day when they might be on the outs in the Senate. The idea of the entire thing was to prevent simple majority rule in that legislative body, and to generally keep government moving at a slower pace and with more compromises necessary for it to move at all.
That’s not Harry Reid’s preference. His preference is to say, “we’ve got the majority and so we’ll do whatever we want, even in the Senate, and you shouldn’t be able to stop us.” That’s why he speaks of “democracy,” even in the Senate which has not functioned as a simple democracy for a long time, and which has traditionally been dedicated to preserving the rights of the minority party, and which was established as a specifically republican (small “r”) body to counteract the more democratic (small “d”) House.
I think Reid is well aware of this history. He just pretends he’s not, because it suits his purposes right now. And when the filibuster suited his purposes, he didn’t hesitate to use it.
I was never exactly sure what Reid thought he was doing when he ended the filibuster in 2013 in order to get those nominations approved. But he seems to feel it was worth it. My guess is that he thought the appointees would fundamentally change the country (and in particular its judicial system) in a way that would have enormous long-term effects that would keep Democrats and the left winning indefinitely in the institutional sense and the electoral sense, and that it was unlikely to come back to bite them. Judges’ decisions are enormously influential. Or maybe he thought the GOP would be too wimpy to use the power he gave them. I also have a hunch that Reid didn’t think it at all likely that the GOP would take control of both the Senate and the presidency in just a few short years.
But that’s what has happened, and now the Democrats are reduced to being the party of No!. Thanks to Reid, their ability to yell “no” as loudly and effectively as before has been attenuated.
The moves against the filibuster and electoral college indicate to me that tyranny of the majority is craved nowadays. How much longer can the Constitution survive?
“Stupidity can be a Capital crime.” (Louis) Wu’s dictum
A dodgy character and a nasty piece of work indeed. Good riddance.
Hope I’m still around in twenty years or so when all the stuff finally comes out about his mysterious “accident.”
Reid was a slimeball, but he was a shrewd and effective slimeball. It will be interesting to see if the filibuster goes away completely in the next couple of years. I have the impression that the Senate Republicans aren’t willing to take that step, but the new feisty attitude might seep down into that musty chamber. There will probably never be a better opportunity for that change in my lifetime.
“Wacky old dude stands next to microphone…you won’t believe what happened next!!”
My contempt for Harry Reid continues unabated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/15/harry-reid-lied-about-mitt-romneys-taxes-hes-still-not-sorry/
BEGIN PASTE
One of the strangest incidents of the 2012 presidential campaign was when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid accused then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney of having not paid any taxes over the past decade. That Reid made that allegation from the floor of the Senate made it even odder.
The problem with Reid’s allegation? It’s just not true. We know that, at least in 2011 and 2010, Romney did pay taxes. How do we know that? Because Romney released his tax returns for those years. In 2011, Romney paid $1.9 million in taxes; in 2010, he paid slightly more than $3 million in taxes.
Our own Fact Checker gave Reid Four Pinocchios for his “no taxes” claim. PolitiFact gave the claim a “Pants on Fire” rating.
Yet Reid (D-Nev.) not only refuses to retract the allegation but also seems to take great pride in it. When pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash last year about continuing to defend a statement that is not true, Reid responded, “Romney didn’t win, did he?”
END PASTE
On our side of the political spectrum we need to refute the leftist meme that the USA was founded as a democracy. It will require the president elect to use the bully pulpit to hammer that point relentlessly….. oh wait, Trump will be president and is not on our side of the political system.
As I read of Reid, I think also of John Glenn. That is a nice reminder that you do not have to be a sleaze to be a politician, or even a Democrat.
I responded to a rant about Trump’s cabinet appointments with an analogy to a pendulum. When it reaches its limits it swings, but not back to the center; it swings an approximate equal distance in the opposite direction. It obeys the laws of physics; and the laws of politics in a free society are analogous. (Reid apparently did not understand such basics when he helped to push the political pendulum beyond reasonable limits.) Of course, we must also be mindful.
Parker, I do not think it entirely possible to characterize Trump at this point. His cabinet appointments appear to be on our side of the political spectrum. Surely, he appreciates the logic of the Electoral College.
Oldflyer,
I have been pleased with some of djt’s announced nominations. But, less pleased with his dilly dallying comments about AGW and to a lesser extent on immigration. But I am content to see what he does during the first year, although I will remain skeptical about his true intentions.
As far as Trump explaining the virtues of a constitutional republic is concerned, that is something akin to a Monty Python skit set in Alice in Wonderland territory..
Reid is a vile human being whose time has come and gone. His role in ending the filibuster is not his only legacy — so is the lack of a federal budget for 6 years, and so are his lies about Romney and Trump from the Senate floor.
There was a time when the Senate was a gentleman’s club. It is no longer, in part because Reid has never been a gentleman. He is a small man who very much deserved the beating he got — perhaps from his exercise machine, perhaps from his brother (according to rumors here in NV). The sooner we can forget him the better for us all.
“so is the lack of a federal budget for 6 years” – F
That is one observation that often gets lost in the crowd of issues over the past 8 years.
For all reid’s talk of democracy and such, he had a direct hand in circumventing the deliberative process to determine a budget.
Always hear the MSM talk about how the GOP were obstructionists, particularly when some decided they need to go kamikaze on a government shutdown (without getting the public on side as to why it is necessary), yet the GOP never had much opportunity to “negotiate” anything – a shutdown showdown was about their only option left, over continuing resolutions and debt ceilings.
Reid effectively locked in $1T deficits for several years, because of his ploys, and to this day few people recognize it.
Once upon a time, the House had filibusters, too. Thomas Brackett Reed eliminated them, so the House wasn’t as “democratic” as we might think.
A WSJ commenter on Pruitt’s EPA nomination by Trump:
“Just the right antidote for out-of-control totalitarian leftist government. The louder the loony toons squeal, the more my heart rejoices. It means something good for the country is happening at last. In a few weeks the new Congress will repeal Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, and our new president will set about rescinding all the illegal, unconstitutional executive orders, as well as disavowing the nuclear capitulation to Iran. All that will remain of Obama’s “legacy” will be the obscene $10 trillion in unpaid bills he’s run up and the wreckage of the Democrat Party.”
The commenter has his eye on the ball. He sees the Big Picture. Would we could all do that. We also must Remember the obverse of “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, and cannot be deconstructed in a day either.
Reid is replaced by Schumer as one worm replaces another.
Trump is far, far from perfect, but he and his team are anti- Democrat anti-Obama anti-Clinton, and that’s good enough for me.
Harry Reid strikes me as the least admirable person in politics. He doesn’t have any of the qualities that a good (or even a crooked) politician would have. He’s not smart, not honest, not charismatic, not even likable, he’s a bad speaker, he’s not even a sincere but misguided ideologue.
He’s been married to his high-school sweetheart for over 50 years. I’ll give him that.
“I mean, if Comey kept his mouth shut, we would have picked up a couple more Senate seats and we probably would have elected Hillary.”
What a vile thing to say. And utterly unnecessary.
He could just as easily have said: If only Carlos Danger had kept his mouth shut (and his pants zipped)…
…because that had as much as anything else to do with Trump’s victory.
Although, as I continue to enjoy pointing out to disappointed Hillary supporters, a BIG reason why she lost is that they didn’t show up to vote! Democrat participation, in some places, was as low as 20%. You can’t win if your people don’t vote.
Many people were predicting, before the election, that the “enthusiasm gap” would be decisive. Turns out it was.